Transcript Your Time for Your Life, Knowing Your Values

Your Time for Your Life
Facilitated by Derek LaCroix QC
and Robert Bircher
Knowing Your Own Values
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Time and Values
• The most optimal use of your time is to
spend it, in congruence with your values
• Your values form the foundation of your
life and determine the direction your life
takes
• Having a great life means making good
decisions about career, relationships and
activities, making good decisions
requires that you know your values and
keep them in the foreground of your
thoughts
• Knowing your own values is much more
difficult than you would expect
• The problem is that it is not easy to
separate your personal values from a)
your parents values and b) the dominant
values of the culture
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Time and Values
• Because of the difficulty separating out
your own values from family or cultural
values, many people get caught in a life
they don’t like because the are living
somebody else's values
• This becomes a painful waste of time
and you can get into a situation where
you think “I am creating a life that is not
the way I want to go”
• You may also experience yourself
asking the question "Is this me or is this
the way I am supposed to be?”
• Or it may be a sense of “I have
everything that is supposed to make me
happy but I am not happy”
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What are Your Own
Values?
• For the purposes of this workshop our
definition of values is “core
psychological driving needs or
priorities in life”
• All behavior is driven by values
• Values tend to be fairly basic and
simple and can usually be expressed in
one or two words-if it is more than that
it is usually a story or a description of a
behavior
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All in the Family
• It is so difficult to deconstruct or separate
your own values from your family of
origin’s values because you have had them
repeated to you over and over since birth
• Most families value achievement, wealth,
education, religion, status independence,
appearance etc.
• Each generation gradually changes as those
who are willing to live different values step
out.
• In some cases the new values are just
reprioritizing existing values
• Exercise “ Think of 3 of your family values
you agree with and 3 that you don’t”
• Discuss with your group
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Popular Culture and
Values
• Future historians will probably say “this
culture pursued wealth and material
goods in the mistaken belief these
values would bring them happiness”
• One of the most powerful ways in which
these values are impressed upon us is
that they define our success
• Popular culture, heavily reinforced by
the media defines success as the pursuit
of winning , money, status , physical
attractiveness and consumption of
material goods-the more of these you
have the more successful you will be
• By this definition most people are not
successful
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Popular Culture and
Values
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• Being poor, powerless,
unattractive, and unpopular means
you are a loser by these
definitions
• With this restrictive definition
there is little opportunity for
success and a great chance for
failure
• Blindly accepting society’s
definition of success and failure
means you are forced down a path
that is impossible to attain and not
truly your own
• What this often results for lawyers
is a sense that you are a success in
Your Definition of
Success
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• One important reason to understand
your values is how it fits in with a
definition of success
• If you have no definition of success
how could you possibly tell whether
you are successful or not after any
experience?
• The default definition is usually
what society wants or valueswinning, status, power, appearance
and conspicuous consumptionwhich isn't very fulfilling for most
people
• A “when I get or achieve”
definition doesn’t work either-When
I get into law school I will be happy,
A Useful Definition of
Success
• Success in life: Being in the process
of creating that which is most
important to you
• This definition is about a process not
an end point
• This definition will be unique to you
and may or may not be approved by
society at large
• To adopt this definition you must know
what is most important to you-your
values!
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Values Clarification
• Most people are not very clear about
their own values even though they are
usually obvious when we look at their
behavior
• Being clear about what our values are
allows us to make good choices about
important matters such as work and
choice of partners etc.
• We typically have many values but it is
most useful to be conscious of our top
5-7 values-We need to know them in
some useful order of priority
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Your Own Values
• Your own values tend to be formed
fairly young and usually don’t change
much over the course of our lives-what
does change is the way these values are
met or sometimes the priority can shift
slightly as we age
• For example a person that values
prestige and attention will likely have
the flashiest bike in grade three, the
hottest BMW after becoming a partner
in a prestigious firm, and the coolest
scooter in the old folks home-nothing
has changed except the form in which
the value manifests itself
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Values
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 You will usually get your core
values met positively or
negatively and whether or not you
are conscious of them or not-you
are automatically programmed to
seek them out
 If you need stimulation,
excitement and variety in your life
you will create them-these can be
created constructively(being a
prosecutor) or
destructively(robbing banks)
 Many people who have made
poor choices in life are simply
Values
• Values can manifest in what
appear, on the surface level, to be
quite different behaviors
• I value a sense of freedom and so
bought a large boat and enjoyed
the openness of the ocean on
weekends-after a number of years
the work of cleaning the bottom,
endless repairs and cost and
boredom with boating I sold the
boat to regain my sense of
freedom!!
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Should Values vs. Actual
Values
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• Should values are those values I
think I should have based on what
the culture or my family want
• My own values are what I actually
have and can be determined by
looking at my life and what I have
done with my time
• They are usually mixed up and
difficult to separate
• Some deconstruction and process
is required to separate these out
• Several tests are required and it is
useful to do this in a group since it
Values Testing
• Simply asking people about their
values usually doesn’t work since you
will always get “should” values mixed
in with authentic values
• An easy way to tell is how that person
actually behaves in life if they say “I
value my health” but they are
overweight, smoke and out of shape
this is a “should or ideal self” value not
a real one for them-or it simply isn’t
one of sufficient importance for them
to act on
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Values Indicators
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• Most people have lots of values and various
tests can raise your awareness of your own
values
• One way is to simply rate the importance on a
list of values, in other words scaling from 110-the problem with this method is that “ideal
self” or “should have" values can creep in
• Another way is to look at your life and try
and deduce values from your behaviors-this
tends to be more accurate but involves some
detective work since it is not often easy to
deduce why you did what you did -i.e. what
values were in play when you went to law
school?-accomplishment, intellectual
challenge, curiosity, sense of achieving
something difficult, prestige, power, wanting
to help others etc.
• You can also fool yourself by only looking at
the superficial value-for example only coin
collectors actually value money-what value
does your money help you get?
Value Deconstruction
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• Values are not physical needs like
food and water
• Values Indicator Test
• Values Clarification Test
• Epoch test
• Work with your group to get your
top 5 values-they will be slightly
different in each test
• Use one word to mean several things
or concepts, sometimes a 3 word
max phrase will work “Teaching
and Learning”
• You need to settle on your top 5 and
satisfy your group that these are
yours not the cultures or mom and
Congruence
• Living your life congruent with your
values results in happiness-actually it is
a byproduct of this congruence!!
• My top 5 values are beauty,
compassion, teaching and learning,
inner peace and personal and spiritual
growth-almost everything I do involves
these values-my job at LAP is very
consistent with these values as well as
my friendships and social activities-this
results in a stress free happy life
• Once you are aware of your top values
you can use this information for
decision making
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Living your life according to
your values
• Once you are aware of your values the
question is: Are you living your life in
accordance with those values? If you
value friendships and physical activity
how much of your time do you actually
do those things? Are you pursuing
money and prestige when these things
really don’t mean that much to you?
• Almost all lawyers want to be helpersDo you value helping poor people get
justice but actually work in a firm that
helps rich people get richer? You can
create ethical incongruence and it will
manifest as unhappiness
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Manifesting Your Values
• The most common problem is living
your life according to someone else's
values (i.e. parents or family) Another
common problem is not being clear
about the importance of core values to
you-you will always have a sense of
un-fulfillment or that something is
“missing in your life”
• If you are out of touch with your
values what is missing from your life is
you!!
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Values Tests
Your Time For Your Life
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Dictionary of Values
Your Time For Your Life
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